TSA Pat-Down Feels Up Your Crotch Until It Meets Resistance

“We have to search up your thighs and between your legs until we meet resistance,” the TSA officer told Atlantic reporter after he declined a back-scatter. “Resistance?” asked the reporter. “Your testicles,” explained the officer.

The TSA security workers also had a cute name for the back-scatter device:

He called over a colleague. “Tell him what you call the back-scatter,” he said. “The Dick-Measuring Device,” I said. “That’s the truth,” the other officer responded.

Sheeple people offer no resistance and will feel quite safe until lighting, humar error, sabotage or missle strike the plane. Oh I forgot the passenger next to you hasn’t washed his hands even though they’ve had the runs for days so when you get sick the illusionary bubble of were doing something will be useless.

Fortunately, I don’t have to fly often. I might be able to tolerate having my privates felt up and dudes in the back commenting on genital size, but I kind of take offense to that for my family members.

But..Americans will just go along with it and not utter a peep. The whole democracy thing was a good idea, but we know our corporate overlords are actually in control now.

Now..if these things actually made us safer, I’d probably not have as much of an issue, but security experts agree that the pat-down and scanners are just for show and to give us a “good feeling” that we are more secure, when we are not.

I’ll be flying today. With my kids. I’d probably opt for the pat-down, but I’m not sure what would be better for the kids. I hope I can go through the regular old school line and not have to make that choice…

Pat downs don’t have the potential to give them cancer years down the road. Choose the pat down every time, fill out a complaint form, write your congressmen and the airlines to tell them you don’t approve of the screening “choices” you are given.

Agreed. I think this is the only case where “think of the children” is indeed valid.

Less radiation and less generation of child pornography is a win in my book. Arrive an extra 30 minutes early, request the pat down in a private area, request the patdown be videotaped. Then do a FOIA to get he video and share with any congressman that is willing to hear the story.

Actually, I would make sure the patdown was in public. Lots of witnesses to keep the agent in line. Also,the side benefit of lots of people seeing the ridiculousness of children getting patted down because of the non-choice offered by the TSA. The more travelers see this craziness the more likely resistance to the policy is.

A few years ago, I would see them doing the pat-downs right in front of the line at John Wayne. The only thing separating the person being patted down from the ling of oglers was the clear glass. It’s just odd to me to see a woman standing there with her arms stretched out and another woman frisking her.

True story: at JFK a couple of years ago, a female passenger in front of me got a pat-down from a female TSA agent. A couple of male TSA agents hanging out by the carry-on conveyor stood leering like they’d just put on Cinemax at 2 a.m., or hit the porno jackpot or something. Completely gross.

Ever since then I’ve been completely unable to decide which is worse, public or private.

Also, make sure to request that LEO be present. After all, when it comes time for your kids to sue you for repressed molestation, you want to make sure that you have proof that it wasn’t you that was doing the molesting.

Plus, if you figure the massive payouts that the Catholics are having to put up with, I suspect that in 20 years the government might have a payday in store for you.

You have a better chance of getting cancer from the flight than you do from the scanner. Backscatter x-ray machines emit about .005 millirems of radiation per scan, while the flight might cause you to absorb up to 2 millirem- 400 times as much radiation.

Also, they’ve started implementing software on these machines that doesn’t store the image.

Judging the damage these machines can do to you merely by the total amount of radiation you are exposed to is as ignorant as judging a vehicle’s performance by the max RPM the motor can attain. Not only are there different types of radiation but the radiation you are hit by with this device is completely concentrated on your skin and not absorbed by your whole body. Science is always better than ignorant conjecture:

Actually, no. Both this device and what you receive in the plane at high altitude are absorbed through the skin over the whole body. Millirems measure biological equivalent dose- already accounting for the differences between different kinds of radiation that you bring up.
Biologically, the scanner radiation (if it is actually .005 mrem, I’ve never looked up the number) is equivalent is equivalent to adding about 20 seconds to your flight time.

They do archive pictures. Perhaps not all of them, but some are indeed archived for “QA, training and other purposes”. I do project management for some software gigs. Until I hear from the actual coders of the Rapiscan Secure 1000, everything the TSA says is bullshit imo. If you look at the manual, they can indeed store pictures.

LOL yea the Government would never ever do something illegal and software is infallible. LOL! Ignorance is bliss. They will do it and then, years later, simply make it legal to store and transmit the images along with retroactive immunity for having done so while it was still illegal.

I can pull images that have been “deleted” off of a drive. On a hard drive or flash drive, data isn’t really deleted when you delete a file, it’s just marked as “OK to write over”. Until that sector of the hard drive is overwritten a few times, the files are definitely recoverable.

Unless these systems regularly overwrite the entire disk with garbage data to ensure that the data is really gone. Unfortunately, this would wear out the disk pretty quickly, so I doubt the systems actually do a true delete.

On a related note, this is why you don’t take dirty pictures with a borrowed digital camera.

That goes for my sons, too. My wife can make her own choice (she prefers a male OBGYN so I’m guessing she’d like the young man in uniform to do the task) As for my daughter, I’m not comfy with having a man feel her up under her skirt.

it was intended to show just how rediculus current methoids are, and while it would be more usefull, no one were have it go that far. I feel this is a tipping point, esp when they have mnade it clear they will be delibertly trying to feel ur parts.

I really don’t want to take the radiation but I on’t want to miss my plane either. From all the stories I’ve been hearing it’s arbitrary depending on who you get as to how long the pat-down takes, how long it takes them to get to you, etc. I’m not standing there for fifteen or twenty minutes. If they make me miss my plane, they can pay for my ticket change.

I guess Congress critters with private planes don’t have to go through this bullshit.

As a testicular cancer survivor I’ve had my balls in plenty of hands, so unless they’re putting one into a cold, heavy lead clam shell (pinching is a concern), I’ve been through worse. And I know I’ve got big balls (plural intentional, even though one is silicone), while being quite a bit overweight I’d rather not be judged by size of my flaccid penis.

Thank you. I’ve recently marked five years as a survivor, which puts me on the good side of the stats. Funny story: I opted for a prosthetic, but my surgeon somehow managed to oversize the prosthetic he ordered. No way to change that mid-surgery means I spent two or three years being reminded of it every time I sat down, though I have now largely stopped noticing.

Time to march a bunch of those sweet looking Thai girlymen through the pat-down, feel-up lines. I’d love to inflict “Crying Game” moments on those TSA workers. Come on transgenders! Lets have some fun!

More “Security Theater,” as Bruce Schneier would say–designed to give the illusion of security but in fact doing virtually nothing at all to defeat a determined opponent. In fact, it’s the essence of the federal government in a nutshell: pretending to do things that are difficult because it’s harder to do them right.

While flying out of San Diego yesterday I tried to opt out of the body scan. The female TSA agent basically talked me out of it after she explained the procedure, I consented, and then she asked, “So you really want me to go near your groin region FOUR times?!?”

Then she “forgot” to tell me to empty my pockets and had to rub my ass after a hearty dose of radiation.

Exactly. I also had the added pressure of holding up the line behind me, as well as the group I was traveling with. At least I now know what is going to happen so that I can stand up to that kind of pressure in the future.

Dies laughing at all the people here screaming ‘I’m going to get cancer from backscatter x-ray!!’. You guys are a freaking laughing. You get more X-ray exposure on a 6 hour flight than you get from 1 backscatter x-ray. You would have to walk through the backscatter machine between 200x to 400x times to get the same amount of x-ray exposure. According to the FDA website there would be one additional death from cancer per 200 MILLION SCANS. You would have to walk through the backscatter X-ray 1000x 2000x to get the same amount of X-ray exposure from 1 chest X-ray. God you people are paranoid over nothing when it comes to the ‘cancer causing effects’ of Backscatter X-ray.

For you privacy people, I have to agree with you. I feel this is an invasion of privacy and when opting for the pat down I’d make all kinds of suggestive comments over how good they are. As for children I can understand the concern over this in so many ways. I’d KILL anyone that would touch any child of mine that way and NO you cannot scan them. People there is a simple solution to this it’s called driving and if at all possible I would do just that take a drive. When they made ‘backscatter’ a ‘requirement’ I decided to never fly again because of my children.

Now I might consider flying again when the ‘backscatter’ device no longer requires a person to view every scan. Aka it would only show a photo if the software found something that was questionable. To many perv’s out there.

But, radiation exposure is cumulative. If you’re already exposed to radiation on the flight, this additional radiation makes the existing exposure (from the flight) that much more dangerous. It’s not a separate risk. Also, some experts are concerned that because the x-ray from backscatter bounces off the skin, as opposed to radiation entering the body (as with chest x-rays) it will increase the risk of skin cancer. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=126833083

Well, assuming that 200 million flights a year get taken in this country (I’ve no idea what the real number is, but that number doesn’t sound that far off to me) then that’s one totally unnecessary death per year, all in the name of security theater. No Thank You Very Much.

Um, that’s not how it works. If something takes 200 million scans to kill you, that doesn’t mean if you do it once to 200 million people that one of them would die.

Personally I turn down the scans because I’m not OK with some low wage moron viewing a fully detailed photo of me naked. And that’s even with me being out of shape and my naked body is something people would prefer NOT to look at. I can’t imagine what it would be like for a 20 year old girl…

You know they’re getting off on these naked photos too. I object to it on principle.

Don’t be so sure that the medical issues have all been sorted… I posted something similar (below) on slashdot, and got this (informed) response. It is definitely plausible that there may be unanswered medical questions here, and it is certain that the radiation dosing information for backscatter x-rays is completely unknown once absorption area is properly accounted.

My text :
The typically exposure for a bacscatter x-ray scan is 0.005 mrem
The typical exposure for a 6 hour flight is 2mrem
The typical annual exposure for a human is 360mrem (mostly from natural sources)
The occupational safety limit (as set by the NRC and EPA) is 5000 mrem/year, or 2000 mrem/year if averaged over a 5 year period

The backscatter x-ray machine exposes you to 400x less radiation than the flight itself, and constitutes 1/70,000th of your NATURAL annual exposure. Even if you went through the machine EVERY SINGLE DAY of the year, you would still be under the annual occupational hazard limit by a factor of 3,000… phrased another way, you could go through the machine every 30 seconds, 24/7, for a full year without hitting the annual exposure limit!

There are many good reasons to refuse the backscatter x-ray. However refusing it on “medical grounds” is being purposefully ignorant of the facts, and immediately deflates your credibility with anyone that has access to the internet and passed second grade math. If you are THAT concerned about radiation exposure, you would be far better served to wear a paper hat whenever you are outside in the sun!

That being said, the backscatter x-ray machines, and “pat-downs” are bullshit symbollic measures. Neither can detect materials stuffed into orifices, and you better believe that someone motivated enough to bring down a plane will not hesitate to outdo goatse (not that they would even have to, a few grams of plastic explosive attached to the bathroom wall is all you need). Furthermore, as any police officer will tell you, a pat down of everything EXCEPT the “private regions” is absolutely worthless. It’s all just part of the theater, citizen!

Everybody is against this type of thing…….until the next terrorist attack at which point all of the idiots wonder why the government didn’t do MORE to protect them. If you don’t want to be searched, don’t fly, drive to your destination free of harassment. You have no constitutional right to fly.

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.— Dwight D. Eisenhower

The Constitution has the 9th Amendment to gently remind people like you that people have rights before any government, and that a document was just required to specify what powers a federal government should have. I see no allowance of strip-searches in the Constitution: they are illegal, even if Obama is doing them himself.

The government is already patrolling streets using mobile back-scatter scanners to check vehicles (and people). While you may not have an explicit “right” to any particular form of transport, eventually you will find that you have no means of movement left, and have essentially a prisoner with no rights at all unless you defend your right to free movement.

You are not being forced by the government to fly and you have the option of not being frisked.

Look, I don’t like being frisked either, but I also like to arrive at my destination in one piece, not thousands. Americans are nevery happy, if a plane blows up everybody wrings their hands and sobs wondering why the government allowed this to happen to their citizens. Then when they actually take steps to stop a terrorist act, the very same people piss and moan about their rights being trampled on. Take one, but you can’t have both.

First of all, the body scanner won’t protect you from arriving in thousands of pieces, because bombs are not usually carried on one’s person. The two most famous cases of deliberate in-flight explosions, Pan Am 103 and Air India 182, were both brought down by bombs in the cargo hold, which is still the area subjected to the least scrutiny.

Secondly, the risk of being killed by terrorists is astronomically small. You are far more likely to die from pilot error or a mechanical failure. If you drive, you are even more likely to die than if you flew.

A third point: the freedoms delineated in the Bill of Rights ARE NOT the only rights possessed by citizens. One of the main objections to the Bill of Rights, at the time, was that it might seem to idiots in the future that citizens only had the rights specifically enumerated, a point which the Framers disputed. You have other rights, and plenty of rights (a right to privacy, for example) are implied by the rights in the first ten amendments, even without being specifically delineated.

Finally, to argue that the government should take unreasonable measures to prevent all possible contingencies, just because the public is upset by tragedies, is absurd. That kind of thinking leads directly to warrantless wiretapping, warrantless surveillance by GPS devices, and an endless potential for further abuses and corrosions of basic liberties. Reasonable steps should be taken, but suspicionless electronic strip-searches of all flyers are not reasonable by any stretch of the imagination.

I flew out of the Middle East several years ago as a child (I’m a Caucasian female from Canada). The security procedure was as follows:

- A 10-15 minute interview held separately from my father with two armed security officers.
– The officers were polite but probing and asked why I had been in their country, where I had stayed, who I knew there, where I had visited, etc. They also went through the pictures I had taken and asked me about them.
– They were somewhat interested in my answers but where very interested in my reactions. They also compared what I said to what my father said.
– After the interviews we went through a basic metal detector.

- My father’s co-worker who was Arabic (born in Jordan) had a longer interview with more intense questions but was otherwise treated similarly since he evidently did not react in a suspicious manner.

Friends who still live in and travel to the region tell me that the procedures are still the same – no body scans, restrictions on fluids, taking off shoes or the like.

No security is 100% and TSA reacts to everything crazies do, such as the underwear bomber (let’s take naked scans of everyone), the shoe bomber (let’s all take off our shoes), liquids, etc. Meanwhile, you’re more likely of dying from being struck by lightning than in a terrorist attack. I think most importantly we need to balance what are in actuality small risks (though terrible if they come to pass) with common sense and privacy.

But if I were in charge, I would go back to just metal detection of passengers and x-ray of carry on luggage, and refocus resources on the gaping security hole that is cargo. Another possibility, is bomb sniffing dogs and technology that checks for residue of explosives on passengers and luggage.

Put a lock on the cockpit door: kamikaze hijackings are impossible. (That the airline presidents, Congress, and most of the Executive branch weren’t executed for being so incompetent is proof that we deserve them–ooh, look, a shiny statue of Saddam!)

Aircraft bombings have never really been important to anyone, but basic profiling as well and explosive detectors is the most that is needed to reduce the danger well below that of driving–and there are millions of drivers out there who are eager to give their lives trying to kill you.

Have you complainers even had to go through the pat down? I was lucky enough to win this “lottery” on my last flight. It is fantastic. Ike was very gentle, it almost felt like a warm summer breeze. I tried to get one on the way back as well, but they told me to move along :(

I had “enhanced” screening today when I flew out of Hartsfield Airport in Atlanta. I was directed to go to the backscatter system, I refused. They got all huffy and got on the radio and said that someone was “opting out”. They took my carry on luggage over to the inspection area and started explaining the process. I requested that we do it in private, as I really didn’t want people gawking at me when they’re feeling me up (and it also forced them to use more personnel). They certainly went up until they felt resistance.

I also learned another lesson, don’t fill up your car with gas right before you go to the airport. Their scanners don’t like that. ;)

What happens if a female is wearing a sanitary napkin and that is the resistance? The TSA is bound to feel that, right? WIll they ask you what that wad is? Will they believe you if you tell them? Will they make you show them? If the answer is no to the last one, then what’s to stop someone from using that as a smuggling measure?

I flew twice over the past weekend. Fortunately, both airports don’t have a full complement of the strip-search machines yet, so I was able to avoid them, and the pat-down, by using the regular metal detector device. Simple, but I know those days are coming to an end.

Just went flying this weekend. I was preparing myself for having to ask for a pat-down rather than have a full body scan. Thankfully, no one in my family was chosen for the scan, and we went through security without the hassle.
I’d rather not have my young son have to deal with either…

I got one of these pat-downs early this morning and wondered what the hell was going on. I had to empty everything out of my pockets and watched them take my wallet and passport away for screening while the guy felt me up. He was laughing (he said not at me), but I wasn’t too thrilled.

Try leering suggestively at the TSA employee before they start. A well timed moan? Perhaps a pelvic thrust?

I daresay, it’s not going to get any better. But on the other hand, I can’t imagine having to do the touchy feelie on an irritated passenger is much fun for them either. I’m willing to bet that this is the real reason why they make the pat down/feel up as upsetting as possible.

I’ll be opting out of the new technology, and filing complaints on the pat-down. To those who ask what security procedures are acceptable, I don’t think very many of us object to metal detectors and bag scanning. I don’t object to additional random screening, so long as it’s applied reasonably to those who are disabled.

Honestly, I don’t expect the TSA to give me 100% security. I just want them to do a good enough job. I’ll tackle the idiot with the underwear bomb.

It’s time we stopped relying on Big Brother to protect us from ourselves.

So this means that I can make the TSA touch my genitals any time I want to, in public, on camera, at my command? THIS IS AWESOME.

These shitheads now have to grope nutsack for a living, and they expect the passengers to be the ones who are feeling humiliated. Wrong, wrong, wrong. It’s our turn to humiliate THEM by making them touch us. This is awesome. We finally have some power back!

Smell that? That’s smell of ecstasy of FEAR in the air. Every day, our government and the media pump millions of metric tons of FEAR into the air we breath. We have become so addicted to FEAR, that we cannot live without it. The terrorists have been winning since day one. To keep winning, all they have to do is make a half-assed effort at bombing something every so often and the FEAR pumping machines go into overtime. As long as FauxNews and the other opinutainment channels thrive, the terrorist will continue to win.

If you haven’t read George Orwell’s 1984 lately (or ever), blow the dust off a copy and read it sometime and you may become enlightened.

I really can’t believe that this is allowed where children are concerned… it is nothing short of the Federal Government producing child porn!! I personally object to going through the backscatter machines, but I for DAMN sure will not have my 6- or 15-year old daughters walking through the things, and made naked for a bunch of pervs behind dark glass, that you are INTENTIONALLY kept from seeing. Complete and utter BS, and I don’t know why it is accepted…